More Coverage

The father of a Chatham woman kidnapped with a friend and held by a terrorist group while trying to secret her two sons out of Lebanon says he’s “in heaven” now that she’s safe.

“I will sleep better,” Ben Bimbachi said Tuesday, knowing his daughter, Jolly Bimbachi, is no longer a captive in Syria.

Bimbachi had been held by Syrian terrorist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, along with Sean Moore of Chatham, who was with her when they tried to cross the border from Lebanon into Syria, trying to take her two young sons — whom she contends her husband took to Lebanon — with them.

Freed this week, the duo crossed from Syria into Turkey on Monday with the help of Global Affairs Canada.

The children were not with them.

Bimbachi, who was trying to arrange a flight home for his daughter Tuesday, working with federal officials, said he still doesn’t know when she or Moore will leave Turkey, but he’s relieved she’s out of harm’s way.

Some of what the Southwestern Ontario duo endured was revealed in video interviews published Tuesday that told of a plan gone awry, of trying to hook up with smugglers to help them get out of Syria and into Turkey.

Instead, the mission went sideways in war-torn Syria, one of the world’s most dangerous countries, and turned into a one-month odyssey of being moved around and ultimately held in “protective custody” by an al-Qaida affiliate, with the two boys sent back to Lebanon.

Moore, in the video interviews published by SITE Intelligence Group, called it being “politely kidnapped.”

Bimbachi, who said he spoke to his daughter Monday at Canada’s embassy in Turkey, shared other details about her ordeal.

He said it began late last year, in what he called a state of desperation after she lost a legal battle in Lebanon to bring her sons, Omar, 9, and Abdel-Ghaniy, 7, home to Canada.

Jolly Bimbachi decided to flee, with Moore’s help. They entered Syria hoping to reach Turkey and fly back to Canada.

Last November, the Chatham woman flew to Lebanon to see her sons for the first time since their father took them to there in May 2015 and didn’t return.

Ben Bimbachi said his daughter and grandchildren, and Moore, spent the first four or five days of captivity moving among three different groups in Syria.

He said the groups had suspicions about her, but she told them the truth about having a court case in Lebanon, and the court ruling that she had to stay in the country if she wanted access to her kids.

Bimbachi said he communicated with some of the men, noting a man from one group even offered to marry his daughter.

He said another man “was after me to the last days” that his daughter was in Syria, trying to find out where she was staying.

“He always told me, ‘I want to help her, just tell me where she is,’ but I sensed it from him, some trouble and that’s why I never told him where she is,” he added.

Bimbachi said they were moved from house to house at first, since anyone with a little more power wanted them sent to their house.

Then, he said, six armed members of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham arrived with a tank and apprehended a man who had his daughter and grandchildren and Moore in his home. From there, they took them in another vehicle to Idlib, in northwest Syria about 30 kilometres from the Turkish border.

Bimbachi said it was while his daughter was being held by a member of Hay’at Tahir al-Sham that her sons were returned to their father.

A former al-Qaida affiliate, which operates in resistance to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham controls pockets of territory across Syria, especially in the northwest, where Moore and Jolly Bimbachi were crossing from Lebanon to Turkey.

“They’ve weakened their affiliation with al-Qaida, but nobody believes that the core elements aren’t still pretty closely tied,” said Lorne Dawson, director of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security, and Society at the University of Waterloo.

The jihadist group makes its money by controlling territory, almost like a municipality, Dawson said.

It sets taxes and tariffs. It enforces its borders, confiscating property, detaining people — sometimes for ransom — and controlling who comes in and out.

“They have checkpoints. They’re stopping every single vehicle and checking and talking to everyone, trying to figure out who they are,” said Dawson.

The group also likely provides services to the people within its territory, including ambulances and hospitals, he said. “They’re like small governments.”

But the jihadist group operates in a climate of uncertainty and threat from warring factions, said Dawson, who’s not surprised they’d detain newcomers such as Moore and Bimbachi.

“They’d be concerned about these people,” he said. “They could conceivably see them as potentially spies . . . (The other factions) are constantly infiltrating and spying on each other all the time.”

The situation in Syria, especially within warring Assad resistance groups, is extremely fluid, Dawson said. There are constant mergers, defections and changes in leadership.

Unsure exactly when his daughter will return, Bimbachi said she’s been granted a 90-day visa by the Turkish government.